One of the most amusing statements on the X-Men vs Street Fighter game at the arcades. If you don'e have any experience with beat 'em ups you probably won't get it.

Picture this - 2 animated characters duking it out in the traditional side-on Street Fighter way. Cyclops does a jumping attack thing (pardon my sloppy language I was unfortunately not educated in the terminology of dealing out excessive amounts of damage in cartoons) and manages to get a light slap to the head in. Ryu ducks and attempts to block the normal follow-up - a low leg sweep, but Mr Eyeball does another midair slap to the head and enters a crazyass combo1

Before you know it limbs are flying like something out of Jerry Springer as Cyclops opens a can of whup-ass on poor unfortunate Ryu whose only option is to take the punishment. Pain follows thus:

  1. Ryu gets about 15 vanilla punches and kicks before finally doing a wonderfully overdramatic Jackie Chan class backflip to faceplant after a particularly vicious kick to the balls.
  2. Before he's given the opportunity to hit the ground, he gets charged by Cyclops who then unleashes another torrent of pain and misery before...
  3. The crazy super uppercut!!~~!!@@~2 followed by another double digit number of simultaneous hits from the groin to the jaw which catapults Ryu about 15 metres into the air, to be hit by an optic blast3. From memory I think it's about here that the cool little orbiting cartoon yellow birdies of inebriation4 start circling Ryu's surprisingly sturdy head.
  4. Cyclops then follows the badly thorked Ryu into the aerial view to proceed to give him yet another round of beatings that send him even higher. Finally Cyclops heads down while Ryu with, the value-added momentum of a few punches, continues to float momentarily in the air.
By now the scene is set - due to one slip up Ryu has lost over half his health bar thing 5 without a second chance to block. Furthermore, Cyclops' crazy Chi bar of energy shit6 has fully charged to the godliness of level 3.

Cyclops executes the coup de grace.

View momentarily pauses and pans to see Cyclops charge up his super energy bar (complete with Energizer charging sound). A pure bar of optic energy about 10 times the width of Cyclop's head7 blasts from his forehead straight up into the unfortunate Ryu.

Before it even hits him it's obvious he's not going to live. By the third hit the world explodes into psychadelic colors and the sound system thrums with the base of the kill. Ryu is very dead.

But wait there's more!

Despite being thoroughly dead, despite being thoroughly beaten, despite no longer having any health, the crazy laser of death continues to relentlessly pound Ryu's unconscious body as the hit counter clocks up another 20 or so hits. Finally the game enters slow motion as the thoroughly beaten, spasmodically twitching, burning, and generally lifeless body of Ryu plummets 10 metres to the ground.

What does the machine say?

"Cyclops/Akuma WIN!!!"

No shit. Who was Cyclops? Some 14 year old homie.

"79 Hit Combo!!! Marvellous!!!"

Who was Ryu?

Me.

The whole thing took less than Sixty Seconds. What an absolute waste of a dollar. There I was, a newbie happily playing on my own, when some kid asked me for a game. I barely had time to oblige when I find poor Ryu beaten catatonic and myself the victim of some massively vindictive yet strangely non-personal campaign to bring about my utter humiliation.

Ahh well. Thus is life.


1 The later versions of Street Fighter offer a feature where, after having landed the single blow, given the right timing and setup, you may be able to hit them again without them being given the chance to block. Multiple chains of this is known as a combo. Update 17th 08/2000 - lblack says that weak dragon punches can counter vanilla combo's. I wouldn't know, I don't play it anymore *stifles sob*
2 One of Cyclops' wack-ass special moves whose name I forget. Similar Ryu/Ken's Shoryuken/Shoryu Reppa.
3 Another special move where Cyclops projects his eyeball energy at someone. Compare to Hadoken/Go-Hadoken.
4 A feature whereby when your character has taken too much punishment they become disorientated, not responding to controls, and generally standing there wobbling to get the shit kicked out of them.
5 Like in most games, when all your health runs out you die or fall over.
6 Some sort of energy charging feature whereby when it is charged to a certain extent, you can execute special moves that perform even more copious amounts of damage.
7 From what I gather this is the super super super ultimate move by Cyclops.